337 



the exudation will be of great service. But if, on the contrary, 

 there is no amelioration of synii^toms and the i^rogress of the disease 

 resists every attempt to check it; if the discharge continues to flow, 

 not only without abatement, but in an increased volume, and not 

 alone by a single oi^ening but by a number of fistulous tracts which 

 have successively formed; if it seems evident that this drainage is 

 rai^idly and painfull}^ sapping the sufiEering animal's vitality, and a 

 deficient vis vitce fails to co6j)erate with the means of cure, all rational 

 hope of recovery may be finally abandoned. An}- fui-ther waiting for 

 chances, or time lost in experimenting, will be mere cruelty and there 

 need be no hesitation concerning the next step. The poor beast is 

 under sentence of death, and every consideration of interest and of 

 humanity demands an anticipation of nature's evident intent in the 

 quick and easy execution of the sentence. 



One of the essentials of treatment, and probably an indispensable 

 condition when recover}' is in any wise attainable, is the suspension 

 of the patient in slings. He should be continued in them as long as 

 he can be made to submit quietly to their restraint. 



Liuxations. — Strength and solidity are so combined in the formation 

 of the joints of our large animals that dislocations or luxations are 

 injuries which are but rarely encountered. They are met with but 

 seldom in cattle and less so in horses, while dogs and smaller animals 

 are more often the suiferers. 



The accident of a luxation or (its synonym) dislocation {displace- 

 ment) is less often encountered in the animal races than in man. 

 This is not because the former are less subject to occasional violence 

 involving powerful muscular contractions, or are less often exposed 

 to casualties similar to those which result in luxations in the human 

 skeleton, but because it requires the cooperation of conditions, ana- 

 tomical, physiological, and perhaps mechanical, i^resent in one of the 

 races and lacking in the other, but which can not in every case be 

 clearly defined. Perhaps the greater relative length of the bony 

 levers in the human formation may constitute a cause of the difference. 



Among the predisposing causes in animals, caries of articular sur- 

 faces, articular abscesses, excessive dropsical conditions, degenera- 

 tive softening of the ligaments, and any excessive laxity of the soft 

 structures may be enumerated. 



The symptoms of fractures and of dislocations are not always so 

 variant as to preclude the possibility of error in determining a case 

 without a thorough examination, but the essential difference, as it 

 must always exist, must always be discoverable. 



In a dislocation there is one very peculiar and characteristic feature 

 in the impossibility of motion associated with an excessive liberty of 

 movement — the impossibility of active or conti-olled motion, and a 

 facility of passive movement (or movableness) at either the affected 

 joint or at another of the same leg near to it. In a dislocation of the 

 scapulo-humeral (or shoulder) joint the animal possesses no power of 



